It's
a cliche to describe Bruno Mattei's Robowar (1988) as a
"Predator-meets-Robocop in the Philippines jungle", but as
a pitch it's perfect in describing one of B-master Bruno's most
outrageous Filipino-shot conceits. The Robocop part is Omega One, a
bionic killing machine pieced together from the remains of an
American soldier, in black suit and helmet and strapped up with
unlimited firepower - seemingly indestructible and unstoppable, and
programmed to KILL, KILL, KILL. The Predator part: Omega One, also
known simply as the Hunter, is on a killing rampage on a small
unnamed island, and the US military send in a six-man specialist
squad known as BAM - Big Ass Motherfuckers - along with the Hunter's
creator Nascher (Mel Davidson) as "technical adviser", to
clean up the mess. Team leader Murphy "Killzone" Black
(Strike Commando's Reb Brown) has been given no specific orders, but
quickly finds the jungle filled with rapidly putrefying bodies,
massacres, a scorched earth, and a prey that melts into the
undergrowth only to pick off the six men one by one: Sonny "Blood"
Peel (Jim Gaines Jr) looks stunned as his face is peeled off
mid-joint, we see Guarino (“Alex McBride”/Massimo Vanni)
vaporized via the Hunter's unnerving pixel-vision, and Papa Doc (John
P. Dulaney) is dragged through the jungle via the Hunter's
extendo-arm, only to end up a sizzling skeleton. This leaves Black,
the girl medic they rescue known in the credits as "Virgin"
(Catherine Hickland), and the man-mountain tracker named Quang
(Zuma's Max Laurel) to face off - again, the "face"
references make sense in context - against their vaguely familiar
adversary, and the Pagsanjan jungles ignite once more in an inferno
of blasting caps and home-made napalm. Here Mattei achieves the
almost impossible, making an entertaining and compulsively watchable
song-and-dance number from so many scattered body parts, and out of
his long Dr Moreau-like career in splicing together mutant creatures
for the B market, this Robo-Monster from the Islands of Mr Mattei
could be one of his greatest creations…

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HERR LEAVOLD

Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a film-maker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His writing has been published globally in mainstream magazines, academic journals and underground cinema fanzines, for the last two decades.

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013). His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, and throughout the Philippines. Leavold teamed with Daniel Palisa to co-direct The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), both a feature-length documentary on the late Filipino action idol Rudy Fernandez, and a dissection of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the Philippines’ pyramid of power.

He is currently shooting two new feature-length documentaries – The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth (also with Palisa), the third in his Filipino trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of the vibrant St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2018.